Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the heavens are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the church's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to extend the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to the city to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and financial crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by various factions as a marketable good, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and regain her vision becomes the central conflict in a wider conflict with an controlling system which, as these systems typically do, is striving to quell freedom of thought, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the structure of the Earth's sky: windows that look to lead to alternate realities. A particular opening seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its head, designates these portals as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid reason and revert to feeling, yet, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their meaning and their value is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical struggle between purity and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
